Umbrella
Rhinos Park’s most famous nickname was none other than this:
the Ping-Pong Hall.
A moniker earned for being an extreme hitter’s paradise.
So then—
how were pitchers supposed to survive in Rhinos Park, a park where even a graze could send a ball over the wall?
The answer was simple.
Just watch today’s starter, Howard.
Crack!
A clumsy, mishit swing produced nothing more than an ordinary ground ball. He fielded the rolling ball and threw it with easy natural motion.
“Out!”
One out on a two-seam fastball.
And then—
Crack!
This time a grounder toward short. A clumsy shortstop might have let it get through, but the baseline requirement for a so-called pure-blood franchise player beloved by the fans was simple:
outstanding skill.
Slip.
Jang Tae-wook slid smoothly, snared the ball, and without even planting a crow-hop, fired it in one fluid motion.
Thud!!
“Out!”
The ball reached first base cleanly—ahead of a runner who was supposed to have good speed.
Two outs on a changeup.
And finally—
Crack.
The batter, clutching a broken bat, stomped off the field in a sulk. Some people might curse a guy for not running it out full speed, but honestly—
Yeah… I get it.
Any hitter who watches a ball roll straight back to the pitcher like it’s begging, Please just pick me up, is going to feel the life drain out of him.
Howard scooped up the ball that had come right to him and tossed it lightly to first.
The result?
“Out!”
No need to even look.
Three outs manufactured on a cutter.
For a full six years, this long-tenured foreign pitcher had held down the mound at Rhinos Park. Every one of Howard’s putaway pitches was a ground-ball machine. The nickname the fans had hung on him said it all:
the Ground Ball Craftsman.
A nickname that made perfectly clear how he had survived in a home park known as a hitter’s heaven.
And another trademark of this Ground Ball Craftsman was—
“He hasn’t even thrown twenty pitches through two innings…”
“Guy’s a straight-up fisherman.”
“A fisherman?”
“Howard throws out the bait, and the other side just chomps down on it whole, y’hear?”
“Whoa…”
“What, was my little specialty act that impressive?”
“…”
What Jang Tae-wook had just shown off as his “specialty act” was—
“Do you, like, get nauseous the second you see someone from Jeolla Province or something?”
“What?! Where the hell did that come from all of a sudden!”
“…This is gonna be a whole controversy.”
“No… no it’s not!”
Enough joking around.
“But I do get what you mean, hyung.”
“…About what.”
Jang Tae-wook’s tone was sulky.
“The fishing thing. Maybe it’s because I faced a similar type of pitcher recently? It just hits harder.”
“Ah… that guy?”
When KBO players said “that guy,” they usually meant—
“Yeah. Jeong-hoo hyung.”
Do Jeong-hoo of the Wolves.
“Jeong-hoo hyung? You’re close with that guy?”
“Close enough, yeah?”
“Wow… you’re something else too.”
“He’s a pretty decent hyung, in his own way.”
“You call Do Jeong-hoo ‘hyung,’ so why don’t you call me ‘hyung’?”
Well.
“Because you never told me to?”
“Then call me hyung!”
“Yes. Hyung.”
The conversation kept drifting off course.
“I guess it’s not for nothing that people call him Do Jeong-hoo’s budget version. Not sure how Howard would feel if he heard that, though.”
“He already knows. Said he was actually grateful—being compared to a pitcher like that.”
“Don’t lie.”
Jang Tae-wook had a conversation with Howard?
“Hyung, you can’t speak English.”
“I can’t. But Howard speaks Korean really well.”
Maybe that wasn’t as surprising as it sounded. Position players and pitchers didn’t talk much to begin with—especially not a guy like me, who hadn’t been with the team long. As a hitter, I had barely spoken with Howard the pitcher at all, and even then only in English.
“For real?”
“I’m telling you, he’s basically Korean. His kid even goes to a regular kindergarten.”
“Oh…”
So that was why he half-jokingly called himself Korean.
“He’s a good player. Loves this team to death, too.”
He’ll probably retire here with us, Jang Tae-wook added.
“I’ve still got plenty of people I know up the ladder on this club.”
“The Daegu Connection strikes again…”
“Word is the front office is seriously talking about retiring his number.”
“That’s…”
A foreign player getting his number permanently retired in the KBO.
“Wouldn’t that be a first?”
“Yeah, but… he’s already got over eighty wins in five years, and at this pace he’ll clear a hundred by the time he retires?”
“Still feels borderline.”
“Add a championship to the résumé. Our goal is a title, right?”
“Suddenly doable.”
“Right?”
Through five innings: fifty-two pitches, no runs allowed. The brilliant outing of the New Jersey–born pitcher who might just become the Daegu Rhinos’ next retired number didn’t look like it was going to stop even through cleaning time.
Back when the trade went down, a lot of community users had the same question on their minds.
Honestly?
I have no idea.
I’d even adjusted my swing this offseason to raise my launch angle, but I still didn’t think of myself as a home run hitter.
Thud!!
“Ball.”
The first pitch from the multi-pitch arsenal on the mound was a splitter that missed the zone.
The Irons’ starter, who had given up three runs in the first, had allowed plenty of hits since—but only one more run—and was still on the mound in the sixth. Of course, this was clearly going to be his last inning.
Hmm… nobody out, runner on first.
No sign from the bench. The situation wasn’t desperate enough for one, and besides—
They’re not about to call a play on a guy who’s hitting well.
A bunt? From this Gong Ji-hoo?
“Why are you suddenly grinning like that?”
“Ah, sorry.”
Han Seong-gon shuddered as he watched me smile over a useless internal joke.
“Every time you make that face, Ji-hoo, it freaks me out.”
“…That’s harsh.”
“What’s harsh is the stuff you pulled in the playoffs.”
What did I even do?
“I don’t remember doing anything particular.”
“Do you not have a conscience?”
Thud!!
“Ball.”
A changeup. The opposing pitcher kept refusing to challenge me head-on—the same pattern that had been repeating ever since my first-at-bat hit. Of course, I’d still punched a mistake pitch into a hit in my second at-bat as well. Still—
“Garcia’s the one going nuclear today. Why are they only doing this to me?”
“Because you’re scarier than that guy.”
“Wow, I’ll take the compliment.”
But then—
“If they keep burning energy on me like this, aren’t they just going to give up something huge to Garcia?”
“…”
The silence told me I’d hit the bull’s-eye. I wondered if Garcia—the one who’d been loudly declaring today was his day—had any idea that an umbrella named Gong Ji-hoo was shielding him.
“Tch.”
Whoosh!!
A pitch coming in toward the outer edge of the zone. Probably a two-seam fastball. It was close, but it was still a ball that entered the path of my swing. Which meant—
CRAAACK!!!
—it was a pitch I never, ever missed.
The ball lofted high and sailed toward the left-field wall. The left fielder, tracking it as he drifted back, could only—
“Ah…”
—bump his back into the fence that stopped him and let out a sigh.
Whirrr.
Having been an outfielder myself through last season, I understood that feeling better than anyone. Watching a ball just barely clear the fence with nothing you can do about it—of course it feels empty. What are you gonna do?
The park is LaPark, and the guy at the plate is me.
Today’s life tip:
An umbrella can be a deadly weapon.
For real. Someone in my neighborhood actually died from getting stabbed with an umbrella.
The score was 7–0.
My two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth succeeded in knocking the opposing starter, Sean, out of the game. He’d said there wasn’t a single Rhinos hitter he was worried about. I figured he had one now.
Pre-game interviews were a double-edged sword like that.
Fail like Sean, and your words just become fuel for a public roasting. Prove it like me, and they become an expression of absolute swagger.
Crack!
A ball screaming down the line—
Tap.
—snagged cleanly, then thrown straight to second.
“Out!”
Shortstop Jang Tae-wook took the feed at second and fired right back to first.
“Out!”
Top of the ninth. A double play manufactured by the Ground Ball Craftsman and the infielders, and that was it.
A packed house. The special charge of facing the same opponent from last season’s wild-card series. Opening Day hype on top of it all. A game that had generated so much buzz ended anticlimactically in a Rhinos blowout.
Of course—
—WAAAAAAAH!!!
—the home fans packing the stadium loved every second of it.
Caster Lee Han-yeong and color commentator Kim Jung-up were chatting while they waited for the player-of-the-game interviews.
“Two interviews today?”
“The game wrapped up faster than expected, and this is a team a lot of people are curious about, so the network pushed for it.”
“A lot of people are curious… yeah, that’s fair.”
The broadcast booth was among those people, so neither of them had any real complaints.
The first interview subject was, naturally—
“Yes! Let’s meet Howard, who just threw a complete-game shutout on Opening Day. Hello, Howard!”
“Hello.”
Howard, who had just posted the monumental feat of an Opening Day shutout, greeted them in Korean—oddly flavored with a Gyeongsang accent, yet surprisingly precise. The interview itself went smoothly.
“A complete-game shutout on Opening Day—what an incredible performance. Howard, do you have any goals going forward?”
“All of our players are aiming for a championship this season. I’m the same. Rather than personal stats, I’m going to work hard for the team’s title.”
Uneventful. And then—
“Yes, our second interview subject is… another massive performance today. Gong Ji-hoo, now with blue blood running through his veins!”
“Hello!”
Final line: four-for-four with a home run. In a single game, Gong Ji-hoo had proven that last fall’s postseason explosion was no fluke. The interview began.
“Gong Ji-hoo, Howard just said in his interview that he’ll work for a team championship over personal records. Were you aware of that?”
“Uh… first I’m hearing of it.”
Howard probably hadn’t been aiming for this, but—
“Gong Ji-hoo, you previously said your goals this year were a Golden Glove at minimum and MVP at maximum. What do you make of that?”
On the surface, a slightly mischievous question. But underneath, it was a kindness—better to clear the air quickly than let a half-baked controversy fester.
“If I play well enough to win MVP, wouldn’t the team win the championship?”
“Meaning?”
“On our team, the thinking is that if I just do my job, we’re fine. I might still fall short, but I’ll keep working hard.”
Fortunately, Gong Ji-hoo accepted the olive branch and gave a clean answer. Still—
A little boring…
That was what the broadcast crew privately thought. Interviews with Gong Ji-hoo always used to throw out plenty of storylines.
“What do you think was the key to today’s win?”
“Howard’s start and our lineup swinging well were big parts of it, but…”
“But?”
“I think the opposing starter’s interview was the biggest driving force behind the win.”
The interview? Ah—that one.
The booth remembered Sean’s provocative pre-game comments as the Irons’ starter.
“Hahaha! Anger can be a real performance booster sometimes. Then, last question—is there anything you’d like to say to today’s opposing starter, Sean?”
Gong Ji-hoo had been polite and measured the entire interview. And yet—
“I can only swing. And I enjoy a fast-paced game and going head-to-head with the pitcher.”
His out-of-nowhere answer was—
“That’s all.”
—so clearly aimed at a specific player that even without saying much, it was more than enough to set the communities on fire.
Of course—
I wake up and this is what’s going on…
—the person at the center of it all had said it without thinking much of anything.